Last night, I ran a Pathfinder session using MaPnakotic. Server was running on a MacBook Pro. We used two iPads, neither of them having any of the "paid extras" (as these are basically uninteresting to us, since we like physical dice better and I always game with a laptop anyway). This was all done on a modern local Wi-Fi network.

The game was run in the Banewarrens, using downloaded maps, which were stitched together. The resulting maps are pretty large (the "Inner Vaults: Map 2" map we played on is around 6.4MB), which may have contributed to the problems we saw.

1) MaPnakotic is glacially, nearly unusably, slow. Taps would take several seconds to register. Since tap-holding has meaning in the UI, this would inevitably bring a token into "facing setting mode" pretty much every time someone wanted to move it. We eventually learned the trick: quickly tap and release, wait for five or more seconds until the token showed "0", tap drag to where you want to move token, wait around 10 seconds for the movement to show up, hope you were in the right square, if not adjust finger to get in the right square, wait 10 more seconds for the UI to update, let go. It was really, really painful. (Hey, just when you thought d20 combat couldn't get any slower!)

2) Several times, one or both of the ipads would apparently "detatch" from the server, without either the server or the ipad giving any notification that this had happened. Players would (slowly) move a token and (eventually) the ipad would update the token's position, but the update would not reach the server. Likewise movements on the server would not reach the ipads. It worked correctly for most of the night, but these "detatchments" happened at least twice. Recovering required shutting down basically everything and restarting it all. It's possible that this was a server problem, but still, I'd expect the ipads to at least report that they couldn't connect if the server was non-responsive.

3) The line of sight and fog of war stuff seemed to work fine. One exception is when a line of sight barrier would cross a token. This battle started with some Vrocks on an elevated platform in such a way that they were partially obscured (i.e. a line of sight barrier line went right through a square they were in). The tokens didn't show up at all. Perhaps this is designed behavior, not sure. In any case, it wasn't what I expected to happen (though it was not a huge deal).

4) Several discussions got derailed entirely because none of us could figure out how to pronounce "MaPnakotic". Mostly we used "map-not-ick", which is nothing like it is spelled. The best guess was probably "map-nah-cot-ick". But hey, it has a stray capital P for no clear reason, so one player suggested the Pn was supposed to be pronounced as in "pneumonia": "ma-na-cot-ick". So, he called it "manicotti" the whole night. (Similarly, I say "dice-a-nom-ick-con", when it totally isn't.)

We've run a number of sessions now, using the same set up as mentioned above (although some days we only use one iPad). Some other things we've found:

1) We've pretty much given up having the players move their own tokens on the map. Instead, they just point, and I move them on the Mac. Not great, but faster.

2) If the source map in MapTools makes use of the "grid offset" feature to align the grid to the map, MaPnakotic does not honor this offset, resulting in some weird positioning compared to the Mac version. This has required me to do a bunch of annoying Photoshop crap to get my maps to line up.

3) If the source map in MapTools uses anything other than a square grid (either of the hex variations or no grid at all), MaPnakotic crashes when loading the map. This is 100% reproducible, as far as I can tell.

4) MaPnakotic's preference to hide the grid seems to do nothing whatsoever. The grid remains if this setting is on or off.

urthmover wrote:Is there a way to add custom art packs from within the app itself?

Yes you can.
first the art pack must be loaded in maptools ( on the computer that is used as the server).
Start the server on the computer.
then start mapnakotic.
On the top you should see a + sign
hit that and it should list all the artpacks available
tap on the art pack you want and you should see it download

Version 1.1 has been submitted to the app store. Besides the obvious bug fixes, more macro functions, it adds the following major support:
- External monitors, so you can even use a projector (for those with iPads, iPhone 4, or 4 gen iPod Touches and the little $30 adapter cable)
- Works with 1.3b83 (and an alternate method to deal with the "don't know what version we are suppose to work with" issues)
- Hex grids

First, for the record, I'm using a MacBook to run MT and connecting to the MacBook MT server via an iPad2. The iPad2 has an HDMI out to a 58" flatscreen TV. The Macbook and the ipad on on the same wifi local area network (this is not across the 'net)

1. great software for a start. works great on my iphone, but the ipad version seems to have major lag issues. The touch interface seems extremely clumsy on the ipad; on the iphone4 - things are fairly snappy.

2. the lag issues on the ipad get much worse when I connect the external HDMI out cable to display on the TV - bad enough that there is sometime a few seconds between any update on the server (view change, tokens moved, etc). The updates come to the ipad first, then a second or two later and the updates can be seen on the TV.

3. the display is bigger on the TV than the ipad. there's no menu on the TV either, so I'm taking it that the App is re-displaying a totally separate view from what is on the ipad's screen? Perhaps having an option to simply Mirror exactly what is on the screen (like most Apps do) would be better and help take care of some of the added CPU overhead on double rendering everything.

again - great start, and I love the idea of the software (this will blow the pants off "BattleMap" or whatever it's called I think... but for now, I'm looking forward to seeing these lag issues fixed before I make wide use of this app. Until then, I'll be returning to sticking my laptop on the table beside the TV directly.

jonathanjacobs wrote:I wanted to stop by and share my experience with Mapnakotic

First, for the record, I'm using a MacBook to run MT and connecting to the MacBook MT server via an iPad2. The iPad2 has an HDMI out to a 58" flatscreen TV. The Macbook and the ipad on on the same wifi local area network (this is not across the 'net)

1. great software for a start. works great on my iphone, but the ipad version seems to have major lag issues. The touch interface seems extremely clumsy on the ipad; on the iphone4 - things are fairly snappy.

2. the lag issues on the ipad get much worse when I connect the external HDMI out cable to display on the TV - bad enough that there is sometime a few seconds between any update on the server (view change, tokens moved, etc). The updates come to the ipad first, then a second or two later and the updates can be seen on the TV.

3. the display is bigger on the TV than the ipad. there's no menu on the TV either, so I'm taking it that the App is re-displaying a totally separate view from what is on the ipad's screen? Perhaps having an option to simply Mirror exactly what is on the screen (like most Apps do) would be better and help take care of some of the added CPU overhead on double rendering everything.

again - great start, and I love the idea of the software (this will blow the pants off "BattleMap" or whatever it's called I think... but for now, I'm looking forward to seeing these lag issues fixed before I make wide use of this app. Until then, I'll be returning to sticking my laptop on the table beside the TV directly.